Bush Thick-knee

Like most stone-curlews, it is mainly nocturnal and specialises in hunting small grassland animals: frogs, spiders, insects, molluscs, crustaceans, snakes, lizards and small mammals are all taken, mostly gleaned or probed from soft soil or rotting wood; also a few seeds or tubers, particularly in drought years. Birds usually forage individually or in pairs over a large home range, particularly on moonlit nights.

Picture of the Bush Thick-knee has been licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution.
Original source: Own work
Author: JJ Harrison (http://www.noodlesnacks.com/)Camera location

The Bush Thick-knee is classified as Near Threatened (NT), is close to qualifying for or is likely to qualify for a threatened category in the near future.

bush thick-knee are bushy to open grassy landscapes, bordering on semi-arid in hotter areas, with exposed sandy soil. Stone-curlews in Britain once occupied coastal shingle ridges but disappeared from this habitat as human activity increased. The African spotted dikkop inhabits quite arid places away from water, as well as open savanna woodland. The water dikkop (B. vermiculatus) of southern Africa and the Senegal thick-knee (B. More

Bush Thick-knee by MotherCatBush Thick-knee by MotherCat * Favorite * Report Concern * Share This * Facebook * Twitter Add your comment You need to login or signup to add your comment to this work. More

Stone-curlew, or Bush Thick-knee, is a large, slim, mainly nocturnal, ground-dwelling bird. It is mostly grey-brown above, streaked with black and rufous. It is whitish below with clear, vertical black streaks. The bill is small and black, and the eye is large and yellow, with a prominent white eyebrow. It’s a nocturnal bird and feeds at night. More

Belonging to a group of shorebirds, the Bush Thick-knee lives in any habitat with ground litter. I saw quite a couple of the in the Territory Wildlife Park and they were so calm and big-eyed, I guessed they were nocturnal. Indeed they are and then, at night time, they search the ground for invertebrates and small vertebrates. More

Picture of Burhinus grallarius above has been licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial.
Original source: Michael Rosenberg
-Michael Rosenberg -Author: Michael Rosenberg
Permission: Some rights reserved
Order : Charadriiformes
Family : Burhinidae
Genus : Burhinus
Species : grallarius
Authority : (Latham, 1801)